After a pause, he said tenderly, "It's nice to see you laughing anyway."

We'd gone up north because I had decided I needed to get a break from the intensity of the last few weeks. After a month of Constant Serious Discussions, Visits to Authority Figures, and Attention Paid Continuously to The Future, I got it in my head that I wanted to go -- of all things -- horseback riding.

So I found the name of a stable outside a Prescott and here we were... trotting along, quite literally.

Joel was letting me ride along in silence. I liked the crisp, piney smell and the quiet, which was broken only by the sounds of the horses' breathing and their hooves clearing underbrush on the path.

We had switched roles: Now, Joel was now ready for me to meet his daughter, Michal. And now I was the one delaying things.

The story of his marriage breaking up had jarred me. Who was this creep he described himself as being?

And I was perplexed at how Shelley "blamed him" for not being able to have more kids -- when getting your tubes tied is a reversible procedure.

Joel said that she'll probably have it reversed when she finds someone else. "For now," he said, "subconsciously or not, she likes the emotional leverage against me."

Well, that's reassuring!

I suspected he still felt guilty, and worse: "Do you think it's because she still wants you back?"

He laughed.

"Oh, I am pretty sure not..." he said. "We've both changed since then... I am not the guy she married."

I nodded vigorously. The Joel I know is kind and caring, devoted to his daughter, and rather unimpressed with social status. The Joel he had described was money- and status-obsessed, emotionally unavailable, neglectful of his family -- and belligerent when called on it.

But now I realized that I had seen flashes of the person he'd described: His hyper-competitiveness with sports, the way he could argue about political issues long after anyone else was still interested, the way he was keenly aware of how much influence any given person had in a community, company, or second-Sunday basketball league. He had a tendency to get very quiet, almost passive, when someone frustrated him. Now I realized that was his way of controlling the temper I'd never seen.

Had he made his peace with what happened in his marriage?

"Well, of course I feel guilty," he said. "To some extent, I always will. But I can't undo the things I did wrong, to Shelley or anyone else..."

He sighed heavily. "At this point, I've done as much as I can to make it up to her -- what is within my power. I've asked for her forgiveness many times. But I can't spend the rest of my life apologizing, and I can't stay in limbo either."

It scared me -- so much that, after a couple weeks of floundering around, we'd ended up going to see to Rabbi Ringman, whom I had gotten to know two years ago when ex-beau Rick and I were at the do-or-bye phase.

I met Rabbi Ringman and we spent a long time talking about the nature of regret and whether people can change their natures. He believed they could, and that in fact people come out stronger than if they hadn't gone through it at all

"It seems to me, Jessica," Rabbi Ringman had said. "There are a lot of untested guys out there. It sounds like Joel stumbled spectacularly... but he may have learned his lesson, and that gives him a depth that many others lack."

-- I hadn't thought of it that way.

"No one is as strong as the one who manages to conquer himself," Rabbi Ringman said.

I nodded, thinking of the beautiful framed print Rina had in her living room with that quote and the Hebrew equivalent.

And so today, riding in the forest, I told Joel about my conversation with Rabbi Ringman. I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders.

And I couldn't help but read some sort of significance into the fact that the trail got wider as we got closer to the stables, and we rode side-by-side.

And I laughed at how, the instant we got back to the car after returning the horses to the stable, we both automatically checked the cellphones and beepers we'd left behind.

I had two messages from the photo desk wanting names for a cutline on a story that was running tomorrow, and one from my sister Beth with some sort of information about plane tickets for her wedding next month. I didn't hear the rest of her message, though, because I saw that Joel's face had gone absolutely ashen.

-- "What is it?" I asked.

"It's Michal," he said, looking terrified. "She was in an accident, a car accident -- we've got to get to the hospital!"

He inexplicably handed his phone to me and wordlessly slid behind the wheel, and turned to look at me standing beside the car.

"Joel," I began, not sure of what to say. "Do you want me to drive?"

"No, I'll drive. It'll give me something to concentrate on until we get there."

I quickly ran around to the passenger side and slid in.

"Jess," he said, turning to me seriously, "I know you're not ready for this, but can you come to the hospital with me? I need you."

"Of course," I said. As if there was a question...

It seemed like the entire drive passed in an instant and we were at the E.R. of Mesa Lutheran. Joel wondered aloud what Shelley and Michal had been doing in East Mesa while I tried to find the right doctor or nurse to explain things.

Once found, the doctor explained everything to Dr. Joel in medicalese.

I didn't pick up much from what she told him: "Contusions... internal bleeding... cranial swelling..."

From what I understood, another car had run a red light and broad-sided Shelley's car. Apparently, Michal hadn't been buckled in – she'd been asleep across the back seat or something. Both were unconscious when they got to the hospital.

"Her mother is under heavy sedation," the doctor said, and went off to check to see if we could see Michal.

"She's going to be okay, as long as the swelling goes down," Joel choked out in medical translation.

"It's so funny," he said softly. "You spend all this time in medical school learning how to play God, and then when it really counts, you find out that, in the end, it's all a matter of whether God chooses for the swelling to go down or not..."

I nodded, saying little but staying at his side. He kept looking toward me as if to check that I was still there.

We stood in the doorway until a nurse came to take us to the pediatric surgery recovery area.

I immediately spotted Michal, even though sleep (unconsciousness?) hid the big brown eyes I remembered. She looked terribly tiny in the kid-sized bed.

Joel bent over her and somehow wrapped her in his arms without moving her too much. He was crying softly -- and still kept checking to make sure I was there.

"She's going to be okay," he said softly, looking closely at her bandages.

"You can tell the swelling went down?" I said, my voice booming out unusually loud.

-- "Ssshh..." he said, gently. "She's only asleep, not unconscious..."

Michal stirred, and then looked up at me, and then Joel.

"Sweet little Michal..." a voice whispered in my head...

--"Daddy..." she mumbled in what I assumed was an anesthetized daze. "Daddy?"

"I'm here," he said. "Daddy's here, Michali..."

The proprietary feeling in my chest swelled into something else, something overwhelming. I wanted to wrap my arms around both of them. Oh my God, maybe everything will be okay... Michal is going to be fine, and we're going to be a big instafamily! (All we need now is a mortgage...)

"Daddy..." she said, thickly. "Where's Mommy?"

-- oof.

"She's okay, Michali," he said. "We'll go check on her in a minute..."

I thought a second.

"Joel," I began. "Er, I'll go check on her..."

Joel looked up gratefully as I slipped out into the hall.

Looking for signs to the adult recovery area, I wondered if Shelley would be equally grateful to see me...

I always loved the story of Jonah and the whale. Why do we read it during the afternoon service of Yom Kippur?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Let's recap the story: God tells Jonah to go to Ninveh and to prophesy that in 40 days, God will destroy the city. Instead, Jonah goes to Jaffa, boards a ship, and sails for Tarshish. A great storm arises. Frightened, Jonah goes to sleep in the ship's hold. The sailors somehow recognize that Jonah is responsible for the storm. They throw him overboard, and the sea becomes calm.

A great fish swallows Jonah. Then three days later, God commands the fish to spit Jonah back out upon dry land. God tells Jonah, "Let's try it again. Go to Ninveh and tell them in 40 days I will destroy the city."

The story is a metaphor for our struggle for clarity. Jonah is the soul. The soul is assigned to sanctify the world, and draw it close to God. But we are seduced by the world's beauty. (Jaffa in Hebrew means "beauty.") The ship is the body, the sea is the world, and the storm is life's pains and troubles. God hopes confrontation with mortality will inspire us to examine our lives. But Jonah's is the more common response - we go to sleep (have a beer, turn on the television). The sailors throw Jonah overboard - this is death. The fish that swallows Jonah is the grave. Jonah is spat back upon the land - reincarnation. And the Almighty tells us to try again. "Go sanctify the world and bring it close to God."

Each of us is born with an opportunity and a challenge. We each have unique gifts to offer the world and unique challenges to perfect ourselves. If we leave the task unfinished the first time, we get a second chance. Jonah teaches us that repentance can reverse a harsh decree. If the residents of Ninveh had the ability to correct their mistakes and do teshuva, how much more so do we have the ability to correct our former mistakes and do teshuva.

(source: "The Bible for the Clueless But Curious," by Rabbi Nachum Braverman)

In 1948, Egypt launched a large-scale offensive against the Negev region of Israel. This was part of the War of Independence, an attack by five Arab armies designed to "drive the Jews into the sea." Though the Jews were under-armed, untrained, and few in number, through ingenuity and perseverance they staved off the attacks and secured the borders. Yet the price was high -- Israel lost 6,373 of its people, a full one percent of the Jewish population of Israel at the time.

And what does teshuvah consist of? [Repentance to the degree] that the One Who knows all that is hidden will testify that he will never again repeat this sin(Maimonides, Laws of Teshuvah 2:2).

"How can this be?" ask the commentaries. "Inasmuch as man always has free choice to do good or evil, to sin or not to sin, how can God testify that a person will never repeat a particular sin? Is this not a repudiation of one's free will?"

The answer to this came to me at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, at which the speaker, a man who had been sober for twenty-one years, said, "The man I was drank. The man I was will drink again. But now I am a different man."

A sin does not occur in a vacuum. A person who is devout does not abruptly decide to eat treifah. A sin occurs when a person is in such a state that a particular act is not anathema to him.

Consequently, repentance is not complete if one merely regrets having done wrong. One must ask, "How did this sin ever come about? In what kind of a state was I that permitted me to commit this sin?"

True repentance thus consists of changing one's character to the point where, as the person is now, one can no longer even consider doing the forbidden act. Of course, the person's character may deteriorate - and if it does, he may sin again.

God does not testify that the person will never repeat the sin, but rather that his degree of repentance and correction of his character defects are such that, as long as he maintains his new status, he will not commit that sin.

Today I shall...

try to understand how I came to do those things that I regret having done, and bring myself to a state where such acts will be alien to me.

With stories and insights,
Rabbi Twerski's new book Twerski on Machzor makes Rosh Hashanah prayers more meaningful. Click here to order...